Wednesday, 10 February 2010

Has Osborne driven Localism from the Tory agenda?

Some explanation of the stop-go, on-off appearance of Localism in Cameron's speeches, a sort of now you see it, now you don't policy, is given today by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian;

The Tory party's most distinctive message had once been Cameron's desire to shift power from big government to localities. It gave welcome ideological substance to his rhetoric. The British people are not, like the American right, wholly averse to government and welfare. But in poll after poll, they dislike "big central government". They prefer what is local, communal, neighbourly. As they have shown in Scotland and Wales, they want local control over the raising and spending of taxes.

Cameron's rejection of this programme under Osborne's influence has deprived him of his one distinctive and positive thrust. It was Tory and Tea Party at the same time. Though Cameron still talks local he refuses to free council taxes to take some of the pressure of central cuts, and even talks of freezing them. His decentralisation proposals are cosmetic and democratically empty.

Osborne has never struck me as having much of an intellect, still less as being bold enough to embrace change. Visionless, weak politicians instinctively like the big central State, and Osborne seems to be no exception.

If Cameron wants to gain in the polls, it's time he distanced himself from the yapping of his boyhood puppy.

Localism is so important. A Cameron government without it will be as monumental a failure as the Blair/Brown ones. Does Osborne think that he can run the country better by being a little bit cleverer than Brown?

About Me

Twitter

False 'Malware' Alert

Blogger have advised that if users access the blog using raedwald.blogspot.co.uk rather than the 'canonical' URL raedwald.blogspot.com this may give rise to a false malware warning on some platforms under some operating systems under some browsers.